


if you do, i will too

by nockingarrows



Category: K-pop, ONF (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Badass, Banter, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Mild Blood, Platonic Relationships, Some Explicit Language, Teamwork, Virtual Reality, focus on leader line, hyojin pov, leader line being protective and believing in one another heck yeah, no angst for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:00:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29272131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nockingarrows/pseuds/nockingarrows
Summary: “That’s what I was trying to show you. Tell me, what were you and the team most worried about in that moment? What’d you think was going to happen?”Hyojin’s heart dropped into his feet as he realized the truth in it. “We’d get separated.”[OR: the ONFs lose one another in a forest and leader line work together to reunite the team]
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	if you do, i will too

**Author's Note:**

> this is the most self-indulgent shit ever lmao i just wanted to write Badass MF Leader Line and then i was like let's give it plot too!! and then this happened. let's clap for jam finally writing an onf fic for the first time in 2 years LOL just in time for new confback. my timing is impeccable 
> 
> as always, kudos and comments are appreciated!

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but _move_!”

He was too late. Thin cracks split the air before reforming into a sheet of impenetrable glass. Hyojin lunged forward, yelling himself hoarse as he banged his fist against the barrier. 

“Guys! Yuto?! YUTO! Tell them to go back!” 

On the other side of the glass, Yuto’s lips shaped words Hyojin couldn’t hear. _Shit._ Yuto couldn’t hear him; none of them could. Behind Yuto, the other guys—Hyojin’s team, his precious team—had run back from the glade that surrounded them and were all gesturing separately, waving arms and confused expressions blurring together as Hyojin tried to read them all at once. He couldn’t concentrate. 

“Hey!” he yelled, even though the increase in volume was useless. “One at a time. Wait.” He scanned the group again. “Where’s Seungjun?”

Yuto, who was still closest to the glass, yelled something again. Hyojin roared back at him, “ _Not helping!_ ” but still tried to follow his youngest member’s gaze into the forest behind him. A rush of movement caught his eye before Seungjun burst out of the trees, hair mussed but very much alive. He was still wearing his orange T-shirt from that morning when they’d still been in the dorm. 

“Seungjun!”

“Hyojin!”

“Where did you disappear off to?!”

“Never mind that. You—”

“I what? Seungjun?!”

Hyojin’s heart leapt into his throat. His friend had somehow vanished out of thin air again, despite having been _right there_ a minute ago, wearing that obnoxiously bright shirt of his. The impossibility of it all just made Hyojin angry, and he nearly snapped his neck whirling back to face his team. It only took their gazes, though—looking to him for direction, for support—to send his fury shriveling away. He couldn’t let them down now, not here, not after everything they’d done together. 

“Stay there,” he called, trying to bring the calm in his voice up to his face, his posture. _Stay strong for the team._ “I’ll think of something. I’ll…”

He faltered as an eerie sensation started to crawl up his leg: the magnetic force of something much larger than he was pulling him backwards. Hyojin swore with vigor before fear swooped in and cut him off. The pulling surged up to his neck, picking up speed, and then reached his eyes. 

“Shit, _shit_!” 

He tried to keep his focus on the members, but his efforts were futile. The sensation dragged his eyes shut and he fell with it. 

\--

“Hyojin.”

The world was slowly spinning. Hyojin spread both arms, feeling damp leaves roll and rustle against his skin. The air smelled of rich, heavy earth and recent rain. There was also another scent—one less pungent, less present, but still very much there. Seungjun sprayed it on his wrists before he exited the dorms every morning, leaving their manager’s car smelling vaguely floral, vaguely like the high-end watch store his parents owned. 

“ _Hyojin._ ” 

“Yeah,” Hyojin croaked. He opened his eyes to find his best friend staring down at him, dark hair falling over his concerned eyes. His whole figure was draped in the shade of the forest around him; Hyojin could barely make out the familiar curve of his face, the quirk of his smile when he saw that Hyojin was finally coming around. 

“Thought I lost you for a second.”

“Me too, honestly. What—” Hyojin sat up, taking the hand Seungjun offered and letting it drag him to his feet. “—what is this place? What happened to us?”

Seungjun shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. One moment we were just lounging around in the dorms—Jaeyoung was in the bathroom, I’m pretty sure. Then boom, we’re here in this weird forest. I tried to keep up with you for as long as I could but, you know.” He shrugged. “Things happen.”

“How’d we lose you so fast?”

“Dunno, maybe you weren’t keeping as good an eye on me as you thought,” Seungjun responded with a grin. He sobered immediately afterward. “To be fair, it was probably my fault. I kept lagging behind, thinking we should go back the way we came.”

“That’s where I told the others they should go when that glass popped up.”

“Yeah, but that’s the problem. There is no _way we came_. And the glass, well…” He sighed. “Let me show you something.”

“You’ve been snooping around?” Hyojin stumbled over a protruding root as he trailed his friend, who was making his way through the wood as if it were easy terrain, a memorized route. 

“You could call it that. I was trying to find you guys, but found something else instead.”

Given that Seungjun was often clumsy in the modern world, Hyojin wondered briefly if his light stature brought him a natural ease in a place like this, or whether Hyojin was just too busy tripping and huffing to notice when his friend did the same. He reached out and hooked his arm around Seungjun’s for security, muttering a quiet, “Don’t get comfortable!” when Seungjun laughed and patted his hand. 

“There it is.”

“What?” asked Hyojin, squinting into the darkness around them. 

“I told you earlier that I kept thinking we could just go back to where we started.” Seungjun took another few steps forward and reached out just beyond the trees. His hand hit something hard and he made a sweeping motion like he was washing a window. Hyojin, still with his arm looped through his friend’s, leaned over to see. The darkness was still only darkness, but then Hyojin realized it was something more. 

It was glass, dark glass, slightly concave. Hyojin’s eyes widened as he pressed closer. Muddy shapes shifted in his vision and then melded into…a desk. A reading lamp, a pile of books, a used beanie, an inside-out wristband. Pushed a ways out from the desk was a familiar bunk bed, the covers unmade and peeking out from under wooden slats. 

“That’s…”

“Your room,” finished Seungjun. “The dorm.”

“How in the fresh hell—?”

“Because I _believed it_.”

“I can’t say I’m following.” 

“Think about it.” Seungjun’s eyes were bright. He looked the way he did on busy weeknights sitting on the floor of the training room, running the team’s new choreography through with Yuto and Jaeyoung: driven, dripping conviction. “I wanted to find you guys, to bring us home. This place took me as close as it could get, but not all the way, because let’s face it...I couldn’t go home yet.”

“Whyever the fuck not?” 

Seungjun was just looking at him with his usual bright amusement, which Hyojin didn’t think was particularly fitting for the occasion. 

“Why do _you_ think?” he asked. 

“I don’t know.”

“Because I didn’t have you, dumbass,” said Seungjun fondly, butting Hyojin with his elbow. It earned him a roll of Hyojin’s eyes. “And right now, I don’t have the rest of the team, either.” His smile slowly faded, and he pressed his fingers to the glass so hard his skin whitened. “I’m starting to worry that we won’t ever find them.”

Hyojin blinked. “And why’s that? Won’t your little trick help us?”

“Didn’t I just say? This world makes what we believe true. But I don’t...I no longer…” His shoulders slumped. “I barely found you, and when I did, you’d just made that glass barrier.”

“What are you even talking about?” Hyojin demanded with a bark of laughter. “That barrier wasn’t me.” 

“That’s what I was trying to show you. Tell me, what were you and the team most worried about in that moment? What’d you think was going to happen?”

Hyojin’s heart dropped into his feet as he realized the truth in it. “We’d get separated.”

“Exactly. So as long as you believe that we’ve been separated, and I believe we’ll never find them, we’re stuck here. Just the two of us.”

“Well,” grumbled Hyojin, crossing his arms. “That’s stupid. We just have to start believing that we’ll find them, and then we will. How’s that a predicament?” He turned on his heel and started to march back in the direction that they’d come, but Seungjun had his arm and wouldn’t let it go.

“Do you believe that, right now? Do you think if we walk ten feet that way, we’ll find them? Do you think you have what it takes to do that?”

Hyojin opened his mouth, wracked his brain. Closed his lips, pursed them, and then looked at the ground. “I’ll change my own mind.”

“That’s good,” Seungjun said softly. Hyojin didn’t like that he could hear Seungjun’s skepticism in his voice. “Right now, though, we can at least find a sheltered place to think about it.”

\--

It didn’t take them very long to find a tree wide enough that both of them fit in the dry hollow of its trunk. Hyojin didn’t know whether he wanted to believe that they’d just gotten very, very lucky, or whether both he and Seungjun had believed they would find shelter so strongly that they actually did. Soon after, it started sprinkling outside. The pitter-pat of the rain against the curled leaves and branches echoed in Hyojin’s ears and he wondered if he and Seungjun had created that, too. 

He and his friend were scrunched together in the tree, limbs mostly tangled with one another. The hollow very quickly adopted the scent of home from Seungjun’s wrists. It all reminded him of when he and Seungjun would take the bus together, stuffed on one bench with their backpacks because neither wanted to stand. Hyojin leaned against the wood, closing his eyes and trying to feel thirteen again, but his friend broke the illusion. 

“Do you think they’re looking for us, too?”

“Either that, or they’re waiting for us to do it,” Hyojin replied, still with his eyes closed. “Funny that we haven’t made much progress there.”

“We were never the team that excelled at these kinds of things. Physical challenges. You know, being smart.”

“I’d say I’m fairly smart, or at least my in-progress master degree would,” Hyojin retorted. 

Seungjun chuckled. “Okay, you can be book-smart.”

“We went to the same school. At least back then, you were pretty damned smart too.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that. But my point still stands. We’re terrible at sports. We’re abysmal at running. We panic easily. People literally call you a deer in the headlights.”

“I resent that.”

“You don’t, really.”

“Nah, I don’t,” Hyojin agreed, and then agreed to the rest of it too. “It’s true that we’re not great at any of those things. But that shouldn’t mean that we can’t find our friends. What’s so hard about believing?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Rhetorical question. Neither of us deserve to be the wise man here when we’re both running in metaphorical circles. Except we’re not running; we’re sitting.” Hyojin massaged his temples. “Ugh, is Changyoon rubbing off on me? I’m not making any sense.” 

“Maybe you should let him,” Seungjun mused. His eyes were closed now that Hyojin had opened his, like they were taking turns. “If you think like him, you could lead us to him too.”

“Believe that a little harder, then, and do it yourself.”

“Easier said than done,” Seungjun murmured. “He doesn’t always let on about it, but he has a lot less belief in himself than he lets everyone think. You know he comes to me for vocal lessons whenever he’s feeling down about himself, right?”

Hyojin sighed. “Yeah, I know. He doesn’t come to me for the lessons, but he does come to me to talk about it.” 

“Does he now?” Seungjun’s eyes gleamed as they flashed open and turned to Hyojin. “Give me one of your famous pep talks, then. Tell me I’m powerful enough to bring us all back together.”

“You’re powerful enough to bring us all back together.”

“That was the worst pep talk I’ve ever heard.” 

“Ungrateful.” Hyojin stuck out his tongue. “Annoying, good-for-nothing…” He paused, and then added, “but also good at everything.”

Seungjun smirked. “Oh?”

“You’re a great dancer, a great singer. You’re good at learning things on the fly, adapting when a situation gets difficult, and you’re even better at making all of those things teachable moments. You can make everything brighter, regardless of how dark or hopeless they might seem. Hell, you’re even making this brighter right now. I don’t feel like all is lost. I’m sure that’ll come, but you’re helping me wait it out.”

“Hm.”

“I couldn’t lead the team without you.”

“I know that. I’m indispensable.”

“That wasn’t a joke,” Hyojin said, side-eyeing him. Even though Seungjun had been the one to ask for compliments, he was no longer looking at him, and was instead staring out at the rain as it started to come down in sheets. Hyojin continued, his voice barely above a whisper, also watching the storm. “You stand up for us when I can’t. You take the hits that I don’t. If it weren’t an extremely corny thing to say, I’d call you our knight in shining armor. Since you asked for a pep talk, though, I’m going to do it anyway. You’re terrible at physical _anything_ , but I’d bet a limb that you’d take to a sword like a fish to water if it meant protecting us.”

“Shit,” said Seungjun. 

Hyojin was immediately smug. “Good enough of a pep talk for you?”

“No, not that. You _did it_.”

“Did what?” Hyojin turned, and his eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

His knee, which had been unceremoniously draped over Seungjun’s thigh in their earlier attempts to get comfortable, was now lying over a layer of thick, loud chainmail. It clanged against a pair of silver knee pads as Seungjun struggled to his feet, nearly driving his heel into Hyojin’s chest while he was at it. 

“Hey, watch it!”

“This shit is _heavy_!” Seungjun protested as he made his way out into the rain, adjusting the silver plating that had suddenly appeared over his chest. His terrible orange shirt had been replaced with a nice leather tunic, under which rustled even more chainmail. 

Hyojin clambered up after him, crying out a little as the cold raindrops, which had merged into gargantuan versions of themselves in the canopy above, splashed on his head and down the back of his still-very-modern T-shirt. Seungjun was irritatingly dry, covered in armor all the way to the visor on his head as he was, and so he tossed his round silver shield to Hyojin to use as an umbrella. He held the sides of it so that it would stay on his head, utterly bemused. 

“So you believe I’m a knight,” Seungjun deadpanned. 

“I think you _could_ be,” Hyojin defended himself. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“Could you at least have imagined me as a better-dressed knight? This is clunky.”

“I didn’t imagine you as anything at all! I was giving you a pep talk!”

“Well then, I believe you’d make an excellent knight too.”

Both of them looked down at Hyojin, waiting for his sword and shield to appear. Hyojin’s thin shirt, however, remained entirely soaked through and even his socks squelched as he shifted his weight, shivering but trying his best to hide it. 

“Clearly you don’t think the same of me,” Hyojin called over the rain. “Why is that? You don’t think I’d be great at protecting our friends?”

“You wouldn’t do it with a sword,” Seungjun scoffed. “That’s way too fancy. Why deal with all those elaborate moves when you could, I don’t know, just shoot them?”

“Don’t you dare—oh, god.”

Hyojin knew this outfit. He lifted an arm and shook out his telltale cowboy’s fringe from their Sukhumvit Swimming promotions. This weird world had even gotten the details right: from his dangling silver key earring, to the small metal studs on his jacket, to the pistol tucked into the holster at his waist. 

“Not my fault you associate shooting with that,” Seungjun wheezed as Hyojin threw him an indignant look.

“What’ll you do if I shoot _you_ , huh?!”

“You wouldn’t. And plus, you’ve got my shield. Your honor wouldn’t let you shoot me defenseless, would it?”

“I don’t need your stupid shield.”

“Then give it back and take a shot. I dare you.”

Hyojin’s ears rang with the pouring rain above his head. He grimaced just as Seungjun burst out laughing, having caught sight of his face. 

“Don’t ask if you can’t pull through!” He spun his sword in his hand. Hyojin pointed at it.

“Since when did you learn how to do that?”

Seungjun glanced at his hand, and then did the trick again. His eyes widened. “Uh…”

“Ah, so the knight thing gave you a confidence boost.”

“No,” said Seungjun, a slow smile forming on his face. “I think _you_ did. I was still surprised when I did it. But you weren’t. You thought I could do it. You thought it would look cool, right?”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“Oh, so you _did_.” 

“I told you, _I’m not saying anything_.” 

“Because you’re worried you’re going to make me look even cooler? Look at that—” Seungjun patted his chestplate. “I think this thing has gotten a little less clunky. Really fits my shape. And thanks for these little shoulder tassels too—nice flair.”

“That’s definitely not me,” Hyojin said through gritted teeth. “You do look cool, though.”

“Ha, admitting it like a man. Shouldn’t I do the same for you? It’s only fair. Don’t you want a cooler gun? I think you’re way better than that sad old pistol you’ve got there.”

“Seungjun-ah, you know I’ve never shot a damned thing in my life, right?!”

“No, I had no idea,” Seungjun said sweetly. “If you’re going to go find our friends, I’d believe you capable of just about anything. I couldn’t lead them without you, too, you know.”

“I really can’t believe you,” Hyojin burst out, but when he reached for the weapon at his hip, his hand revealed a fully modern black handgun. He held it with two fingers, dangling it like some spoiled, unpleasant vegetable, and spluttered, “...you’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t shoot this. I couldn’t even shoot the other one!”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s true.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Hyojin raised the gun and pointed it into the trees. “See?”

The shot rang out so loud Hyojin nearly dropped the gun; he ended up floundering for it, probably almost shooting himself in the hand. He wouldn’t know. He crammed it back into the little holster at his side (it was no longer the right shape though, damn it all) and stared out into the trees just in time to hear Seungjun snort. 

“What’s so funny?”

Seungjun pointed. “Right in the center. You weren’t even aiming. But _I_ thought you could do it.” 

Hyojin had a thousand retorts on the tip of his tongue, _liar_ being part of at least five of them, but they all died when he followed Seungjun’s finger to the tree he’d pinpointed. His shot was, in fact, perfect. It was as if he’d been aiming for the last five minutes. Stunned, he lifted his gun and shot again. And again. And then again, just to make sure. 

Three bullseyes, all in a row. The hole was so deep that Hyojin could see dim light shining through from the other side. 

Seungjun sucked in a breath, also looking at it. “Well, I think we can find them now. At the very least, we should be able to break that glass barrier.”

“You think??”

\--

The crux of the matter was that neither Hyojin nor Seungjun believed that they could find their friends. That hadn’t changed. But Hyojin also hadn’t believed that he could shoot a gun (which he had now done four times), and Seungjun was wielding his sword very easily for someone who had never touched one in his life. So the parameters had changed, or at least, they had revealed themselves. It was much easier to believe in something when you were trusting a friend, especially one who had been there for the past 13 years, versus trying to believe in yourself. 

Hyojin didn’t think he could find his friends by himself. Or really, as a duo. But believing that Seungjun could do it, all on his own...that was simple. He guessed that Seungjun was thinking along the same lines. 

Either way, it really did only take about ten feet for them to bump into the glass barrier—very literally. Hyojin’s head rang from the impact. Seungjun laughed so hard he doubled over, and Hyojin pulled out his gun and yelled at him. Then he turned the gun on the glass and shot at it: once so that it cracked, twice so it shattered. The shower of glass that resulted also stopped the rain that had been falling from the sky, and by the time the duo had crossed the line where the glass had been, sunlight was filtering in from above their heads. 

“Where do you think we’ll find them?” Seungjun asked, cutting a straight path through the bramble. Hyojin hurried after him. 

“Your intuition is good. What do you think is reasonable?”

“How about thirty seconds?”

“Sounds good to me.” 

Hyojin counted under his breath, turning steps into seconds. At the 29th mark, Seungjun broke into a run. Hyojin sidestepped a tree and also started to speed up before he heard what Seungjun had clearly caught first: a scream, reedy and familiar. 

“Minkyun?!”

“Nnn!”

The trees thinned, and Hyojin rounded one to find himself in a small clearing, standing right behind Seungjun. Minkyun was there alright, but he was standing very still. A figure in a black cloak stood in front of him and pressed a knife to his throat; Minkyun’s hands were trying to follow, slow and shaking. 

Seungjun seemed to rise twice his size in rage. At some point, a knight’s crimson cape had appeared at his shoulders, adorned with the same golden tassels that decorated his shoulder padding. His armor also completely fit him now. Hyojin wondered vaguely if he had been the one to cause this, before Seungjun brandished his sword, pointing it in a flash of angry silver at Minkyun’s assailant. 

“Leave him alone. If you want to pick a fight, at least choose someone with a weapon.”

“Exactly,” said another voice. 

Hyojin turned in surprise as the trees on the other side of the clearing revealed the rest of his team. Changyoon was dressed in the outfit from his island escapade in the Why MV, a handgun similar to Hyojin’s clutched in his hand. His eyes were wide with worry. Jaeyoung had lost half of his shirt (really, what was left of his shirt wasn’t a shirt at all) and was carrying a spiked mace. Yuto looked a little ragged, but Hyojin raised an eyebrow when he saw that their youngest member had wreaths of yellow sparks spinning around his white-knuckled fists. He was also the one who had spoken. 

The figure didn’t respond, and just pressed the knife closer to Minkyun’s skin. A small droplet of blood formed beneath the blade’s edge and started to dribble down Minkyun’s neck before the figure let out a grunt. Yuto’s fists were now empty, and the yellow sparks had latched onto the figure’s shoulders and yanked it off of Minkyun. They were now trying to drag it across the clearing, but the figure just jerked its head and the sparks bounced off of it like useless hairpins. 

It then pointed at Minkyun, who had started to rise to his feet. He immediately let out a yelp and crashed to his knees again. Seungjun’s breath caught in his throat, a sort of strangled sound, and he leaned over to whisper in Hyojin’s ear. Hyojin’s answer was soft but assured, even as the figure grabbed Minkyun by the neck again and called in an assertive voice. 

“You haven’t completed your task yet.” 

Its fingers started to tighten, but Seungjun was faster. He surged forward, sword still raised, and spun the blade in an artful arc. The figure dropped Minkyun and parried with its smaller blade, all casual nonchalance. Hyojin found, though, that he wasn’t worried. There was an element of ease, of arrogant _playacting_ , to Seungjun’s work too. 

“We’re not your chess pieces,” Seungjun spat. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“I can be sure of anything. Isn’t that how this world works?”

He fought like he danced: precise, powerful, clean. Every move was like he was following a river’s current, like he knew every step and slice and was checking off each one. The figure, however, was also a skilled swordsman, and equally (if not more) clever. It certainly had more experience. But Seungjun was a force to be reckoned with, especially when he was determined, and he was very good at not leaving his opponent enough room to breathe. 

Which was exactly the plan. Hyojin scrambled to his feet from where he’d been kneeling out of sight and picked his way through the brush until he was behind his other friends. Part of him wanted to cry out to them, to wrap a reassuring arm around Changyoon’s shoulders or pat Jaeyoung on the back, but he had work to do. Holding his breath, he ran on anxious tiptoes and then reached for his hip. Loading his gun, he pressed his finger to the trigger.

Just then, the figure sliced through the air, aiming for Seungjun’s head. He slid just out of reach, but he was panting heavily, sweat beading his forehead. 

“You’re outmatched.” 

Seungjun blocked another blow. “And so what if I am?”

“You can’t win.”

“No,” Seungjun agreed. A slow grin spread across his face as he dodged another rush of the blade. “But I don’t need to.”

The figure faltered as the words started to process, but Hyojin wasn’t about to give it any more time. He fired. His bullet, identical to the three other bullseyes he’d shot in the forest, hit its mark. He still winced as the figure turned, though, revealing a very plain face underneath its dark hood. It reached up to where a bright splash of blood had appeared at the tip of its ear. 

“You missed.”

“No, he didn’t,” Seungjun said pleasantly, and drove the center of his shield into the back of the figure’s head with all the force of his fury. The figure’s plain face rippled, glitching like some sort of wrong code, and then it collapsed face-first into the grass of the clearing. 

\--

“So you’re a cowboy again.”

“Yes, except this time I can actually shoot.” Hyojin spun his gun in his hands, matching what Seungjun had done for him earlier. The latter noticed it, and grinned. Yuto didn’t, though. He was looking Seungjun up and down with raised eyebrows. 

“And you’re a knight.”

Seungjun ruffled Yuto’s hair in response. “A cool one, thanks to Hyojin. And...so you’re a magician?”

“Jaeyoung-hyung said I should magic my way out of here like we were planning to in It’s Raining,” Yuto answered, before he summoned a flower made of yellow sparks in the palm of his hand. “Then this happened.”

“Jaeyoung has a mace,” Hyojin noted.

“Not my idea,” Jaeyoung grunted. 

“I said he should do someone’s head in, since he’s the buff one,” piped up Changyoon. 

“And so you became your tragic self from Why?”

“Well,” Changyoon said, pouting, “Minkyun said we shouldn’t die wallowing in misery. I thought that sounded pretty likely.”

“And Minkyun?”

“Nothing, at least as of yet,” said Minkyun himself, kicking a leaf as he went. “I’m sure it’s what that weird cloak guy meant when it said I ‘hadn’t finished my task yet.’ Shame though. I want to summon a cat.”

“Of course you do,” Changyoon muttered. Minkyun puffed up.

“What does that mean?”

“Whatever you want it to. I’m just saying you haven’t really been _trying_ to do anything.”

“I’ve been busy trying not to die! We haven’t been able to really do anything since that cloaked guy showed up.”

“That’s fair,” Yuto admitted. 

Hyojin’s heart felt light as he grinned. He wrapped his arms around Yuto’s shoulders and nudged Changyoon with his elbow to tell them to knock it off. They both protested, of course, but this was how things should be. Bickering, bantering. Together. Even if the whole situation wasn’t over yet, at least they were whole. At least they were a team. They’d gone through enough loss to have to be separate in a time like this. 

“It’s up this way,” Seungjun called to them. 

“Didn’t you say you had a plan to get us out?” Changyoon complained as he followed. “How come this feels like a hike?”

“We’ve been walking for ten minutes,” Hyojin pointed out. “And plus, it’s not that far. Really.” 

“Oh, so _you’ve_ already been there?”

“Well, Seungjun and I didn’t have a murderous cloaked figure to deal with, so we did some other things. Like look for an exit,” Hyojin said with a shrug. He kept walking, proud of himself, until he nearly crashed into Minkyun’s back. Confused, he shifted to see what the hold-up was, and then the confidence that had been building in his chest since they’d left the clearing crumpled. 

Seungjun’s window into their dorm room had a guard, and the guard was none other than the plain figure whose ear he had just grazed with a bullet. Its face was passive as it reached out a hand and, in excruciating slow motion, wiped the glass behind it out of existence. Hyojin’s desk was immediately replaced with more trees, more brambles, more twisted roots. 

“ _Bitch_ ,” Seungjun seethed at the same time that Hyojin pointed his gun for what felt like the tenth time. He aimed with an iciness in his chest that started to claw its way up to his throat, threatening some sort of snap in his brain; he had been _this_ close to putting an end to this nonsense. They had all been. 

“You can’t leave yet.” The figure was infuriatingly calm considering that Hyojin had a barrel aimed at its head. “Your work isn’t done here.”

“Hyojin, kill him,” Seungjun said, soft. Hyojin’s finger was already on the trigger, but at the figure’s smile, he hesitated. The smile widened. 

“Kim Hyojin, you’re not a killer.”

Hyojin’s grip on his gun trembled, and he turned wide eyes on Seungjun, whose mouth was set in a grim line. 

“I...” he whispered. “I don’t think I can.”

Seungjun just looked at him. There was something in his eyes that Hyojin didn’t recognize, but not in a way that frightened him. He was just suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that this friend would never make him do something that would hurt him, would understand him without words until the day they died. 

“Hyojin. Do you trust me?”

Hyojin nodded. Slow and sure. A promise. He then turned back to the figure and raised the gun. Started to pull the trigger again and saw, for the first time, a flash of fear on that plain face across from him. 

“You can’t kill me. I know this to be true.”

“See, this is your problem,” Seungjun said, leaning his weight onto one leg. He looked haughty, like he had the upper hand. Like he _knew_ he had it. In that moment, Hyojin would have followed him to the ends of the earth, regardless of whether he asked. “My friend here doesn’t believe he can kill you. But _I_ do. We do. As long as you threaten us, he will protect us the same way. Would you like to pit your belief against ours? Against all five of us?”

The figure’s dark gaze flashed back and forth between Seungjun and Hyojin before pausing on each of the members. Weighing its options. Hyojin looked into its face and knew that he wouldn’t remember its features if he turned away, but he would remember the look in its eyes. Fear, certainly. But if Hyojin wasn’t mistaken, he also saw a little awe. 

“Take them off,” the figure ordered suddenly, touching a finger to its undamaged ear. “Take them off the list, right now.”

\--

Hyojin’s eyes snapped open. He sat up too quickly and immediately slammed his head into the boards that made up the bottom of the bunk bed above his. He clutched his head as his brain reeled. 

_Bunk bed._

“Yuto?” 

“Hyung.” Yuto’s face appeared over the side of the bed, dark circles ringing his eyes. He rubbed them, and then ran a hand through his hair. “I had such a strange dream.”

“Me too.”

“We were in a forest...and then I became a magician...and you were…”

“The cowboy from Sukhumvit Swimming,” Hyojin supplied, suddenly tired. He slumped against the back of his bunk. 

“Did we really all have the same dream?” asked Changyoon from the doorway. Jaeyoung poked his head over his shoulder and then leaned his chin there, blue hair sticking straight up. His hand reached for the side of his leg as if searching for his mace before realizing that he was just wearing pajama pants. 

Behind him, Minkyun’s hand kept brushing his throat. 

“It really didn’t feel like a dream,” he said. 

“It didn’t,” Hyojin agreed. 

“I don’t think it was,” said yet another voice. Seungjun stepped into the room wearing his stupid orange T-shirt. His expression was partly bewildered, partly smug. He raised his phone with a text message from their manager. “We were booked for a mysterious virtual teamwork schedule today. Not even the company knew much about it, other than that it was supposed to take all week. But the whole thing just got canceled. Everything. Apparently a call came in saying that we’ve been taken off the cast list.”

“Take them off the list,” Hyojin repeated. “Well, that’s not terrifying at all.”

“Not in the slightest,” Jaeyoung said, looking like he wasn’t planning to go to bed ever again. After a pause, he let out a soft chuckle, probably to calm his own nerves. “Maybe in that virtual world we could have qualified for more ISAC games though.”

A laugh bubbled out of Hyojin’s chest, loosening the tension in the rest of his body. Another followed it, and then another, until he couldn’t stop. Yuto had been watching him and was now also laughing; Changyoon joined him, and then Minkyun. Seungjun covered his laugh with his phone and Jaeyoung bent over, bracing himself on his knees. 

It felt good to laugh. It felt normal. 

“Just back to practice, then?” asked Minkyun tentatively, when they’d finished. 

“Yep, guess so.” Yuto’s voice was brusque, but then it softened. “We really shouldn’t forget about this, though. If we need to talk about it. We learned some good things.”

“Like the power of friendship?” 

Seungjun eyed Hyojin, who nodded almost imperceptibly as he added, “And the power of trust. Plus a good old-fashioned pep talk.”


End file.
